The beginning of the XXI century, marked by the foundation of the Warsaw Uprising Museum in 2004, brought a museum turn in the Polish memory landscape. This turn may be also observed in the commemoration practices of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, which has been developing more and more museums and multimedia exhibitions. This focus on museums means that the Church, too, is constructing modern multimedia spaces similar to those found in other contemporary historical museums. These Church-sponsored spaces follow the same principles, employ the same means and techniques, and are often conceptualized by the same professional design companies. During my presentation I will refer to the Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko Museums located on the Martyrdom Trial of Blessed. Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, who was a Polish Roman Catholic priest associated with the Solidarity movement, who became a symbol of the Polish struggle for liberty during the communist period. In 2010 he was beatified and in 2014 a Martyrdom Trail linking Bydgoszcz-Górsk-and Włocławek was established. A wider goal of my presentation is to show that the main goal of the church museums is to transmit values rather than preserve the past.

Zuzanna Bogumił is a sociologist and cultural anthropologist, working at the Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw. She is currently interested in the religious dimension of memory and coordinating the project sponsored by the Polish National Science Centre, “From Enemy to Martyr”, which examines the impact of Orthodox discourse on the official memory of Soviet repressions She is an author of the books: Gulag Memories: The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia's Repressive Past, co-authored Milieux de mémoire in late Modernity: local communities, religion and historical politics (forthcoming with Peter Lang in 2019), and main author of Enemy on Display: The Second World War in Eastern European Museums (2015).